Selected items of interest to the media community

• The new highest encomium for editors is not literary — it is entrepreneurial

April 30, 2012: 

According to WWD.com, editors of magazines are closer to brand stewards than wordsmiths.  Using the very first appearance of BonAppetit's editor in chief  flogging that brand's new blender as the quintessential example of this trend (he sold 20,000 skus,) the difficulties of managing disparate products comes with the territory of line extensions.  For the entire story, go here.   

• Stop the Wordpresses: Gawker’s Nick Denton is pretty darn sensible

April 24, 2012: 

When Gawker Media founder Nick Denton was interviewed by GigOm, the web site pronounced his ideas "controversial."  Not to us! They all seem perfectly reasonable and appropriate.  Among other topics, Denton talked about how the conversation around a story should be the primary focus rather than the story itself and the decline of Facebook and Twitter as conversational media.  Read the story here, and decide for yourself.

• Sony’s Rob Wiesenthal: The Future of TV Isn’t TV—It’s the Tablet

April 18, 2012: 

Waiting for the day that a majority of consumers download content from the internet directly to their TVs? You may be waiting a while, said Rob Wiesenthal, chief financial officer, Sony Corp. of America.

"The past 10 years everyone has been trying to figure out what is the optimum [user experience] for [internet-enabled] TV," Mr. Wiesenthal told the audience today at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York City. "People are trying guns, pointer devices … and actually, I think it is the tablet."

The what?

Mr. Wiesenthal's thesis is that more and more consumers will "throw content" from their tablets to enabled TVs through technologies similar to Apple's Airplay. Further, consumer-electronic companies are increasingly going to need a "revenue stream after the point of sale" if they want to compete in this multi-screen world, he said. For Sony, that stream comes from services such as its Playstation Network, which sold $1 billion worth of content in the last year, according to Mr. Wiesenthal.

Read the full article at AdAge here.